tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post571285276402250754..comments2017-08-18T00:25:03.910-04:00Comments on Noahpinion: Beware of "thinking like an economist"Noah Smithhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09093917601641588575noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-8719301711043349942017-03-27T02:20:23.625-04:002017-03-27T02:20:23.625-04:00Thanks! :-)Thanks! :-)Noah Smithhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09093917601641588575noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-49099044135820617432017-03-26T23:15:23.989-04:002017-03-26T23:15:23.989-04:00My favorite quote from the post: &quot;If an exper...My favorite quote from the post: &quot;If an expert or guru can&#39;t point to some research that supports his pronouncements, you shouldn&#39;t trust that his brain just works better than yours&quot; This really seems to be a consistent theme for Noah Smith which I agree with. Good post.Alex Peekhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16599952608457953713noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-23172481435267599672017-03-24T04:23:02.172-04:002017-03-24T04:23:02.172-04:00Wouldn&#39;t​ &#39;thinking like a scientist&#39; ...Wouldn&#39;t​ &#39;thinking like a scientist&#39; do just fine? Or simply &#39;think&#39;. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-13982828451842797772017-03-18T15:22:51.436-04:002017-03-18T15:22:51.436-04:00^Britonomist gets it (although I would add scarcit...^Britonomist gets it (although I would add scarcity to the mix). This whole blog post misrepresents what thinking like an economist actually means and instead evolves into a persnickety whining against Sargent&#39;s speech and Cooper&#39;s talk as if they used the word &quot;principles&quot; or &quot;summary/lessons&quot; in an absolute sense. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-54428062169479008682017-03-17T20:57:40.984-04:002017-03-17T20:57:40.984-04:00I agree. When I state that an economics principle ...I agree. When I state that an economics principle is &quot;people respond to incentives&quot; in ECON 101 I immediately follow it with the statement that &quot;Isn&#39;t this obvious, trivial even? But if it is obvious why do so many people act as if it is not?&quot; I then follow up with a few examples. Companies like Microsoft who tried stack ranking (lowest 10% performing in a team get cut every year) and who are then shocked! shocked! that team members form coalitions to help them friends and refuse to help other teammates... There are countless examples of people ignoring incentive effects...Paul Johnsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12426701015960293973noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-56050514488104939362017-03-17T12:52:47.286-04:002017-03-17T12:52:47.286-04:00Thinking like an economist usually just means thin...Thinking like an economist usually just means thinking like a calculating utilitarian, who tries to calculate the net benefit/cost of a given proposal while considering a broad amount of indirect effects over time. Be honest, when was the last time you heard a non economist/non econ fan talk about broad regulatory incentives to innovate for firms regarding a proposal that isn&#39;t obviously anything to do with that? When was the last time you heard a psychologist or sociologist frame policy issues in this kind of language? The reason I decided to study economics is because, when I used to read many debates and discussions it was usually the economists that would take the most utilitarian approach and consider &#39;incentive compatibility&#39;, while people in other fields might frame this in more intuitive normative aspects or in terms of class relations, and actively shun the concept of utilitarianism as immoral. Britonomisthttps://neweconomicsynthesis.wordpress.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-63343356479247802392017-03-17T11:25:30.040-04:002017-03-17T11:25:30.040-04:00If you had to make a survival guide for living in ...If you had to make a survival guide for living in today&#39;s mediated world and you were to title your survival guide, &quot;How to Protect Yourself from Ideological Indoctrination&quot; what would your top ten tips be?Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14804449155063106877noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-64283762449112001742017-03-17T10:30:17.477-04:002017-03-17T10:30:17.477-04:00The thinking economist
Comment on Noah Smith on ‘B...The thinking economist<br />Comment on Noah Smith on ‘Beware of &quot;thinking like an economist&quot;’<br /><br />What it means to think like an economist is well-defined: “It is a touchstone of accepted economics that all explanations must run in terms of the actions and reactions of individuals. Our behavior in judging economic research, in peer review of papers and research, and in promotions, includes the criterion that in principle the behavior we explain and the policies we propose are explicable in terms of individuals, not of other social categories.” (Arrow)<br /><br />The definition of the subject matter translates into the following hard core propositions, a.k.a. axioms: “HC1 economic agents have preferences over outcomes; HC2 agents individually optimize subject to constraints; HC3 agent choice is manifest in interrelated markets; HC4 agents have full relevant knowledge; HC5 observable outcomes are coordinated, and must be discussed with reference to equilibrium states.” (Weintraub)<br /><br />So, thinking like an economist boils down to: “most of what I and many others do is sorta-kinda neoclassical because it takes the maximization-and-equilibrium world as a starting point.” (Krugman)<br /><br />The problem with the maximum-and-equilibrium world is that it consists of NONENTITIES: constrained optimization, rational expectations, equilibrium. One must be a rather feeble thinker to accept these green cheese assumptions as premises of economic analysis. Economists do this since 140+ years.<br /><br />Those economists who do not subscribe to HC1/HC5 are called heterodox economists. Unfortunately, Heterodoxy is good at debunking but failed to replace the neoclassical starting point with something better. As a result, the current state of economics is this: the four main approaches ― Walrasianism, Keynesianism, Marxianism, Austrianism ― are mutually contradictory, materially/formally inconsistent, axiomatically false, and ALL got profit, which is the pivotal magnitude of economics, wrong.<br /><br />No economic advice ever had sound scientific foundations. Obviously, “thinking like an economist” does not yield acceptable results. Noah Smith tries to save the situation and to put some lipstick on the dead pig: “So while “thinking like an economist” is in principle a good thing, beware of people who claim to know how to do it.”<br /><br />The fact of the matter is that “thinking like an economist” amounts to accepting proto-scientific cargo cultic rubbish as science. No thinking being will ever do this.*<br /><br />Egmont Kakarot-Handtke<br /><br />* See ‘Confused Confusers: How to Stop Thinking Like an Economist and Start Thinking Like a Scientist’<br />https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2207598AXEC / E.K-Hhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10402274109039114416noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-65026362163859285892017-03-17T08:20:09.473-04:002017-03-17T08:20:09.473-04:00Dear Noah,
i think what Russ is referring to here...Dear Noah,<br /><br />i think what Russ is referring to here is that the public discourse (unfortunately) really often stops at the point where a politician claims that a certain policy will generate or destroy jobs. In my view it really comes hard to many commentators of public policy to see other consequences. And this is not because understanding the other things that might be going on is terribly hard and requires advanced calculus but because &quot;the unseen&quot; is easily ignored by people who did not go through a process of sesibilisation Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02611264539993871758noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-13685140751360903062017-03-17T07:01:44.116-04:002017-03-17T07:01:44.116-04:00&quot;Does it take an economist to worry about tec...&quot;Does it take an economist to worry about technology bans reducing the incentive for innovation? No.&quot;<br /><br />This may seem obvious to you, but many non-economists do not immediately think like that, unfortunately.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17232051.post-72486901366422862212017-03-17T03:43:42.816-04:002017-03-17T03:43:42.816-04:00This post reminds me all too much of my intro to m...This post reminds me all too much of my intro to macro and micro textbooks. I always felt like the intro classes were just libertarian indoctrination for general audiences with no expectation the majority of the class would move on to other higher level courses. Luckily, I&#39;ve never had a teacher who was an ideologue, they&#39;ve all been really fair minded and avoided ever getting too political on the political economy side of things. Lukahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07277134451848581852noreply@blogger.com